Machine and equipment assets, generally, are engineered to perform particular tasks as part of a business process. For example, assets can include, among other things and without limitation, industrial manufacturing equipment on a production line, drilling equipment for use in mining operations, wind turbines that generate electricity on a wind farm, transportation vehicles, and the like. As another example, assets may include healthcare machines and equipment that aid in diagnosing patients such as imaging devices (e.g., X-ray or MM systems), monitoring devices, and the like. The design and implementation of these assets often takes into account both the physics of the task at hand, as well as the environment in which such assets are configured to operate.
Low-level software and hardware-based controllers have long been used to drive machine and equipment assets. However, the rise of inexpensive cloud computing, increasing sensor capabilities, and decreasing sensor costs, as well as the proliferation of mobile technologies have created opportunities for creating novel industrial and healthcare based assets with improved sensing technology and which are capable of transmitting data that can then be distributed throughout a network. As a consequence, there are new opportunities to enhance the business value of some assets through the use of novel industrial-focused hardware and software.
One of the difficulties in designing a computing platform that supports machine focused software is the amount and the variety of applications that may be of interest to a user through the platform. For example, a power plant user or operator may be interested in viewing and interacting with numerous applications and systems related to the plant in order to manage/view attributes such as generators, cooling towers, a plant floor, materials, alerts, fuel usage, power protection, power distribution, control systems, and/or the like. As another example, an aircraft operator may be interested in viewing and interacting with applications and systems that can influence aircraft such as weather, historical flight data, cargo, fuel, and the like.
Furthermore, machine based applications (or other type of applications) that may be stored on the cloud platform may be created by different vendors using different programming languages. Also, the applications may have different inputs, different outputs, and behave differently from each other. Furthermore, each application must be able to operate within the cloud platform and with other applications that are or that may at some point be stored on the cloud platform. Therefore, a process for testing various types of applications and ensuring that they will work properly when added to the cloud platform is needed.